The Beautiful People of the Internet Hurt Too

YouTube Digest is a look at some of the most popular new YouTube videos of the week. This week we have an Instagram hunk getting serious, an emotional exchange between two exes, an exploration of “Netflix and chill,” and a creepy watermelon.

MY LONG JOURNEY | EMOTIONALLY OPENING UP - 320,149 views

Here’s an interesting case study. This fellow is Nate Garner, a successful enough YouTuber who is really successful on Instagram, where he has some 1.7 million followers, with thousands of people liking his frequent beefcake photos. He’s a handsome guy! In a very chiseled, All-American sort of way. Maybe almost too chiseled, but I suppose that’s a matter of taste. Anyway, it seems that some people, specifically Instagram commenters, have been giving Nate a hard time. He’s vague about what their comments were, but we can probably guess they said something about vanity or shallowness or something. Because this video, the emotionally opening up about a long journey, is Nate telling the story of how, starting in middle school, he was shunned and ostracized by his classmates because he was too good at school, too good of an athlete, and, though he never says it, too good looking. It’s a real sob story!

Though, look, in the video he does talk about some suicidal ideation, which is certainly no laughing matter, and of course anyone, no matter how smart, talented, good-looking, etc., can suffer from depression and deserves to have that taken seriously. And certainly there might be some value in someone like Nate Garner making a video and talking about those issues, to remove any stigma or false assumptions about what kind of people are depressed and what kind aren’t. Sure. I’ll give this video that.

But . . . There’s another way of looking at this video that’s a lot more cynical, which is that this is one long 22-minute humblebrag that’s meant to stop random Instagram commenters from pointing out this guy’s ceaseless vanity. That’s certainly the take of most commenters on the video, at least. Because the narrative being spun here is that because he was this golden god of the pitch and the classroom, that all his peers assumed he would be haughty and arrogant, and so they preemptively dismissed him before he could dismiss them. Which is sort of the narrative of a narcissist, isn’t it? Like, the world is so intimidated by my greatness that it conspires to destroy me? I don’t know. It’s hard to watch this video and then look at his Instagram page and not feel like the video is sort of just a guy with a bruised sense of power and masculinity trying to humanize himself so he can keep on posting pictures without people calling it vanity. Might that be what’s happening here? I think it might be.

Whatever is happening here, it is an intriguing example of the phenomenon of Instagram beauties trying to prove they are people too, while commenters react in varying ways. I mean we’re all just starfish eating a seal, aren’t we? Everyone’s devouring something, and it’s an ugly process, but it’s what happens. A pretty person says “I don’t think I’m better than you, YOU think I think I’m better than you” and everyone else reacts. And we all feed off that energy for as long as it lasts, glomming on to its warmth so we may better pretend we all aren’t ludicrously finite entities floating lamely and insignificantly through a cold, airless mystery that’s vaster than anything anyone has ever or will ever know. Let’s look at the shirtless guy and then laugh at the shirtless guy and then the shirtless guy will do something else and then we’ll laugh again and then, in a century, we’ll all be dead. That’s just how it goes.

Ali and Andrew Part 1: Why Did You Cheat on Me? | The And - 7,179,903 views

This was a very popular video this week. In it, a former couple sits down and has a candid talk about their relationship. Who did what, what went wrong, why things happened, etc. All those post-breakup questions and unresolved issues that swirl around in one’s head after a breakup, spoken aloud, to the person they are meant to be spoken aloud to. It’s strangely powerful to watch! And uncomfortable. And, ultimately, it’s hard not to get a sense that this is a very particular kind of couple that would do a thing like this, and so they are perhaps less relatable than they initially seem. And, of course, because they know cameras are there, that’s bound to affect the way they behave and what they say. So. This is not some peek into a rare, raw moment of pained reunion. But the video doesn’t pretend that it isn’t heavily staged, certainly. And maybe that’s the only way to do something like this, the only way that it will happen. “You want me to ask Andrew why he cheated on me so many times? I mean, it would take a lighting crew and a camera guy and, I don’t know, Glamour magazine to make that happen.” And so it did happen.

What Does “Netflix and Chill” Actually Mean? - 839,442 views

Here’s BuzzFeed being dopes again. This video is supposed to be a cute thing about how slang is crazy and who could possibly know what it means. But that’s dumb because people know what “Netflix and chill” means. It means sex. That’s what it means. The joke is that it doesn’t mean chilling and Netflixing at all. So some dweeb walking around the BuzzFeed Motion Pictures offices asking other dweebs what the phrase means is silly. Especially because most of the people in the video are just playing dumb. They know. They’re just trying to be funny and above it all. Not to mention, of course, that we yet again have an example of a piece of slang that came out of the black community now being flippantly dissected and laughed at by mostly white folks. Unpleasant! This is an unpleasant video. Netflix and chill means sex. There should not really be a debate about that at all. Let alone in the BuzzFeed offices.

SKIN A WATERMELON party trick - 13,386,410 views

You read that view count right! This here is a goddang sensation, this video about how to ruin two perfectly good watermelons to do a weird thing where a watermelon looks like it’s in a watermelon case. It’s kind of gross, isn’t it? Well, watermelon is gross in general, and you’re all fools for eating it, but it’s even grosser when it looks like some sort of red pupa or something. Isn’t this unsettling? I don’t like this slick, ovoid watermelon in its creepy shell. This is not how things should be. Would you want to eat that shiny viscera capsule if it was served to you at a backyard barbecue? I don’t think you would. So why do so many people want to know how to make it?

It’s sad, but true: summer is slipping away. We are losing our grip on the good times and good weather. But we can hold on for a little bit longer. On this, Labor Day weekend. Hold on. Be brave, be steadfast. Cling to summer like you would to a lover. And though you may hear Mother Nature laughing at you, stick to it as long as you can. You’ll lose eventually. We’ll all lose eventually. But for now, this one last weekend, hold on. Don’t let summer slip away too quickly. Stay, summer. Stay.